Throughout the world there are vast reserves of hydrocarbons in the form of oil shales. Oil shales are sedimentary inorganic materials that contain appreciable organic material in the form of high molecular weight polymers. The inorganic portion of the oil shale is a marlstone-type sedimentary rock. Most of the organic material is present as kerogen, a solid, high molecular weight three dimensional polymer which is insoluble in conventional organic solvents. Usually the naturally-occurring oil shales contain a small amount of a benzene-soluble organic material which is referred to as bitumen.
The most extensive oil shale deposits in the United States are the Devonian-Mississippian shales. The Green River formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming is a particularly rich deposit, and includes an area in excess of 16,000 square miles. The in-place reserves of the Green River formation alone exceed 3 trillion barrels. The Piceance Basin of Colorado represents nearly 85 percent of the Green River reserves.
A typical Green River Oil Shale is comprised of approximately 85 wt. percent mineral (inorganic) components, of which the carbonates are the predominate species, and lesser amounts of feldspars, quartz and clays also being present. The kerogen component represents essentially all of the organic material, and the elemental analysis is approximately 78% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 2% nitrogen, 1% sulfur and 9% oxygen.
Most of the methods for recovering hydrocarbon or organic material from oil shale materials involve mining the oil shale material, crushing it, and subjecting the crushed oil shale materials to thermal decomposition. The thermal decomposition of oil shale, i.e. pyrolysis or retorting, yields liquid, gases and solid (coke) products. The relative amounts of oil, gas and coke produced are controlled primarily by varying the parameters of temperature and time during the course of retorting the oil shale. Modern oil shale retorting processes operate at about 480.degree. C., (896.degree. F.) in order to maximize the yield of liquid hydrocarbon products. It has been reported in the literature that oil yield decreases and the retort gas increases with increased retorting temperature. It has also been reported that the aromatic content of the synthetic crude oil produced in retorting of oil shale increases with increased temperature.
Several major problems remain unsolved in the commercialization of the processes for recovering hydrocarbon from oil shale by retorting. A substantial amount of the hydrocarbon component of the oil shale is consumed by combustion to generate the temperatures needed for the pyrolysis reaction. The synthetic crude produced is very high in olefins and low in saturates and aromatics, and so a substantial amount of hydrogen must be added to produce a good quality crude suitable for conventional refining. The hydrocarbon fraction which is produced in the gaseous state in the retorting process is greatly diluted by carbon dioxide resulting not only from the combustion of hydrocarbon portions of the oil shale, but also from thermal decomposition of the carbonate mineral fraction of the oil shale. Since dolomite and calcite are stable at temperatures far above the normal retorting temperatures, most of this carbon dioxide is derived from decomposition of dawsonite and nahcolite.
The state of the art retorting method only recovers about 56% of the kerogen as a useful product. Because of this, as well as the other problems discussed above, there is essentially no commercial production of synthetic crude oil from oil shale materials in the United States at the present time despite the enormous reserves represented by the oil shale deposits. It can be seen from the foregoing discussion that there is a substantial, unfulfilled need for a new process for recovering useful hydrocarbon products from oil shale by a process which reduces the cost for recovering the oil, or increases the percent of kerogen converted to useful product, or preferably both.